Honor Magic 2 slides into view with six cameras and a notch-killing design

The Honor Magic 2 has been officially revealed in China, alongside the Huawei sub-brand’s first smartwatch, the Honor Watch.

As expected, the Honor Magic 2’s main selling point is a sliding mechanism that conceals the handset’s front camera ‘notch’ when closed and gives its 6.39-inch AMOLED display (2340 x 1080 pixels) a nearly 100% screen-to-body ratio.

Speaking of cameras, there’s a lot of them on the Magic 2: no less than six, in fact. The aforementioned front ‘selfie cam’ setup is comprised of a 16-megapixel primary lens and a pair of supporting 2-megapixel lenses.

On the rear of the device, there’s another, more powerful triple-camera configuration that pairs a 24-megapixel monochrome lens with a 16-megapixel colour lens and tops it all off with a 16-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens. Both are intriguing layouts, to say the least.

Under the hood, there’s a top-of-the-line Kirin 980 SoC backed by 6GB of 8GB of RAM, and the option of either 128GB or 256GB of on-board storage, while keeping things running is a 3400mAh battery capable of 40W ‘SuperCharge’ fast charging, but not wireless charging.

There’s no room for a 3.5mm headphone jack, either, as the Honor Magic 2 is fitted with just a USB-C port, but there is a new Honor accessory to help you get around this in the form of the wireless FlyPods Pro earbuds.

Security is handled primarily by an in-display fingerprint scanner, while Honor’s new Yoyo digital assistant makes its debut on the software side of things: Honor’s Magic UI 2.0 sitting on top of Android 9 Pie.

The Honor Magic 2 will be available in three gradient colours – Red, Blue and Black – and cost Chinese ¥3799 for the 6GB/128GB version, ¥4299 for an 8GB/256GB configuration, and ¥4799 for the top-end 8GB/256GB model. That’s about £425-£535 depending on which version you opt for, but while pre-orders have started in China ahead of a November 6 release date, there’s no word on UK availability at present.

It’s not a stretch to imagine we’ll see the Magic 2 – or a phone very similar to it – launched here, though, as Honor has a history of UK releases. Things look less promising for the US, where Huawei and Honor devices are persona non grata.

The Honor Watch, which features 1.2-inch round AMOLED touchscreen, heart-rate tracking, and up to seven days of battery life, is pegged to launch globally in January 2019 – presumably at CES given the time frame.

Let us know what you think of the Honor Magic 2 on Twitter @TrustedReviews.